China Blocks WhatsApp - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/business/china-whatsapp-blocked.html?mcubz=3 <comment><USER2> What the long-term effects will be: China's ruling class further cement their power at the cost of China's innovation and future growth. Interesting and useful things are made when people able share and consume information. e.g. Jack Ma's US visit exposed him to Yahoo. Ma Huateng was clearly inspired by his exposure to ICQ. The list goes on. The same thing happens in the West but it happens a lot more often since there are a lot more opportunities to share ideas with much fewer restrictions.

The end result is that China's fate as being relegated to being the world's giant copy machine is sealed unless things revert

The people who will get ahead in China in the future are the ones who are somehow able to live outside of China to experience new ideas. This is already true, but its importance will grow as China's censorship grows.

The more China closes up, the less Western companies have to fear about future tech dominance or crazy innovation from China in the long run

To be fair, things may even out since Western governments seem to be doing all they can to copy China's censorship and gov control. SOPA, PIPA, SESTA, and the Digital Economy Bill come to mind. I'm sure others can add more to the list.

<comment><USER3> Alternative:

Innovation happens within the context of Chinas censorship and political regime. Blocking of entrenched western competitors allows home grown solutions to spring up, and local technological know how to develop faster.

Capitalism and innovation turn out to work within the context of an illiberal society just fine. Especially as China avoids the mistake of closing itself off to the rest of the world, but stays integrated in the markets, as well as the academic exchanges.

The Chinese government doesn't stop high tech investment, but only blocks a few select companies that have products that are, at their core, easy to replicate (WhatsApp, Facebook, to a lesser degree Google) at a sufficient level of quality.

Rather than free markets pushing towards a more liberal politics, the Chinese government develops means to make the market optimize for political obedience [1].

Most people individually will consider themselves "free enough", and not care about politics as long as the country is well managed. Nothing stops you from starting to research or trying to build self-driving cars in China [2]. China will continue to manage to hire western talent for its firms [3] until whatever skill gap still exists is filled.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System)

[2] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/01/goldman-says-china-has- talen...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/01/goldman-says-china-has-talent-data- and-infrastructure-to-embrace-ai.html)

[3] [https://qz.com/1062035/half-of-the-top-10-employers-of-ai- ta...](https://qz.com/1062035/half-of-the-top-10-employers-of-ai-talent-in- china-are-american/)

<comment><USER4> China will reach some predetermined level of technology that The Party decides they are comfortable with, then close their borders and just get on with being the Middle Kingdom in splendid isolation. That is my prediction. I don't think they feel the need to project power and remake the world the way the US and previously the UK do/did. Maybe they will disengage from the world and look spacewards.

<comment><USER5> Not entirely implausible. That's in a sense what they did after they sent out Admiral Zheng He with a fleet of ships and thousands of men in the early 15th centuryas far as East Africa - they concluded "meh, nothing interesting there", and shut down the whole program.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He)

<comment><USER6> The funding for Zheng He's voyages was pulled because Ming China needed the resources to defend against renewed attacks from the north, i.e. Mongolia and Siberia. Because Britain is an easily defended island and the Iberian peninsula has the Pyrenee mountains acting as a defensive wall, England and Spain didn't have this type of problem when they sent out their fleets.

<comment><USER7> What about the Dutch?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Edit: This is not a justification or defense of internet censorship. It is an explanation of why the Chinese public may be more willing to accept strict government controls than the West.

While most Westerners see actions like this as serious violations of individual rights, the Chinese are used to such exercises of control by their leaders. There is a firm historical basis for similar behavior going back thousands of years, and the desire for social harmony and stability which in part enables strict government control through tacit public acceptance is deeply rooted in Chinese culture.

It's important for Westerners to realize that the Chinese never had a Locke, or a Rousseau, or a Hobbes. The foundational political philosophy taken for granted in the West has no parallel in China. Their political philosophy is grounded in a very different hierarchy of values.

<comment><USER9> > It's important for Westerners to realize that the Chinese never had a Locke, > or a Rousseau, or a Hobbes.

Neither did South America but they were inspired by all of them when they formed their modern republics after the various revolutions, after kicking out the Spanish rulers in the 1800s the military generals had a choice to form democracies and they sought inspiration from Europe, just as America did a century earlier...

Almost every European country had a legacy of monarchy, Japan with their Empire, etc. There's a long history of centralized control in every culture. Why is China unique?

The problem is China went the authoritarian route, the party defines the culture, it's not a natural phenomenon of the people. It won't matter if there is a shift towards liberalism when people don't have a choice.

Not to mention Hong Kong and Taiwan aren't far from China's core culture yet they respect liberalism. Chiang-kai Shek could easily have won the war against Mao and it's entirely possible their culture would look a lot more like South Korea or Japan and less "Chinese".

People downplay the complete and total effectiveness of government controlled media and propaganda campaigns. This idea that Chinese culture is just different from the 'west' is exactly what is forced down the Chinese people's throats, it's the party line - not an original concept. The "chinese way" is what they constantly use to justify their repressive actions. While any time anything bad happens in the West they promote those acts widely in the media as examples of the flaws of the western worldview, while thoroughly suppressing their own flaws... so I'm highly suspicious when I hear this excuse.

<comment><USER10> Serious question: what would happen if China abolished the Communist Party or whatever they call and chose democracy. Chaos? Breakdown of the country into separate states /provinces? Civil war? Military rule?

I would not want to the one in charge the day after. Obviously (moderated) rule by the people is best but not sure how China and say countries in the mold of Saudi Arabia will handle it.

<comment><USER11> What is "China" in this case? Its government is the Communist Party. It's not going to abolish itself!

The question to ask, if you want China to change, is to ask how would the Chinese Communist Party lose its grip on power. That would probably need to happen following an economic crisis. However, looking at how badly the Chavistas are driving Venezuela into the ground these days, and how much they're able to hold onto power, you can see that it's not easy to get rid of a government with a lot of resources. The boiling frog theorem applies here. A sudden shock, sudden famine, sudden economic turmoil is what's most likely to create the conditions of regime change.

<comment><USER12> To take the analogy a bit further with the boiling frogs, the frogs jumped out of the water, until Goltz removed the brains from the frogs.

So, how does that relate to China? Well, if they still have brains, they will reach a tipping point as the water warms. More closely, so long as they have access to information (I think) they will eventually decide that enough is enough.

So, then the question is do they have enough information? Do they have enough freedom to communicate with each other?

It's hard to say. I've been to China and I think the answer is actually an affirmative. They have plenty of information. They all know about the GFW, the censorship, and how it is different than the West. They don't appear to be under any illusions.

I've spoken, in person, with multiple people in China and they all know those things, as well as being up to date with their current local and national politics. It's hard to describe, but they just seem to accept it. I don't want to say they see it as a good thing, but they all pretty much say that it is for the national harmony.

They know about Tianamen square. They even have a special word for censorship - river crab, though I forget the reason. They know about the death penalties. They know about the corruption of local and national politicians. They seem to be as aware of their politics as much as we are aware of our own, maybe even more so.

It's a different mentality, I guess? They accept it and think it helps promote social harmony. It wasn't easy, and still isn't, for me to get my head around.

<comment><USER13> "River crab" is homophone with "harmony", an euphemism for censorship.

As for why people accept the situation, one can probably start with "Nash equilibrium" (I chose not to use the term "prisoners' dilemma" as that could project uneeded connotation in this context).

<comment><USER12> Near, thanks. I'd had it explained to me, but had long since forgotten.

It was very different to go there in person. I expected an undercurrent of political unrest and dismay with the things like censorship. It really didn't seem like I met anyone willing to vocalize serious displeasure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This event is an amazing lesson in what China's rulers see as their interests and how they pursue those interests.

Over the last several decades, these rulers have done a lot to open China to the world and lift the totalitarian restrictions of Maoism.

This process has been the greatest poverty reduction program of all time, and thus it would be easy to mistake it for altruism, or at least a belief in governing in the common interest.

This theory, however, fails to explain much of the Chinese leadership's behavior, and I submit that self-interest is a superior theory.

The wealthier and stronger China becomes, the wealthier and stronger its rulers become. Thus it is generally in the rulers' interest to make China wealthier and stronger.

But if something would make China wealthier and stronger, but could loosen the ruling clique's grip on that wealth and strength, then it is against the rulers' interest and they will act to prevent it.

This is why China often acts as though it values technological leadership, but continually takes measures such as these, which undermine that leadership.

The result, as several in this thread have pointed out, is that China will not soon be the world's leader in cutting-edge technology.

But China will still be rich. And China will still be strong. And China's rulers will still be in power.

<comment><USER15> _And China 's rulers will still be in power._

I wonder. When the inevitable downturn comes the population won't have the option of voting out the current government. They may well turn to other means.

<comment><USER16> This almost always happens. Because in order to achieve what they have achieved, they had to give their citizens a certain amount of freedom.

Generally when the new generation becomes old enough , it would have never seen why people are afraid of the rulers so much, then it becomes a situation of a showdown.

Though it doesn't always have to end with a bloody outcome, for instance Spain went from dictatorship to democracy quite peacefully after it's dictator died in 1975.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's not just censorship, China is now openly engaged in economic warfare of foreign companies within China, closing up the Chinese economy, and preventing foreign companies from competing fairly.

"The Chinese government is blocking South Korean companies from leaving China while prohibiting assets from being taken out of China without any standards. In addition, Lotte and other large South Korean corporations are also having difficulty in their withdrawal process as the Chinese government demands huge compensation from South Korean companies restructuring their human resources management structures...

South Korean manufacturers have been not allowed to bring production facilities back to South Korea. The Chinese government has banned South Korean manufacturers from transporting simple production machines to South Korea from China while designating them as "equipment that adversely affects the Chinese economy."

[http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/national/19352-e...](http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/national/19352-exodus- china-s-korean-companies-suffering-omnidirectional-retaliations-china)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is getting really strict.

I went to China around 2012:

* Facebook was already blocked

* Google and wikipedia magically stopped working when you searched for "tiananmen"

* Gmail worked fine

I returned in early 2017, oh god what a change:

* Don't even think about Facebook

* Ironically Facebook messenger worked until my session expired

* No gmail, google at all (don't remember about Wikipedia)

* Whatsapp worked fine

And now it is even getting worse....

<comment><USER19> >* Google and wikipedia magically stopped working when you searched for "tiananmen"

Hmm I find this hard to believe because the massacre is known as the June Fourth Incident. "tiananmen" is the location, and blocking that would seem a bit strange for people trying to find directions, etc.

<comment><USER20> If you search for Tiananmen in Google, the first result is 6/4\. Most westerners associate Tiananmen with the event more than the place.

Now if you search for Taylor Swift's most recent album, TS 1989, well, that's kind of blocked also. Not sure why :)

<comment><USER19> Wow that's hilarious

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Last year I went to China, wanted to show a web project I had in internet and it didnt work at all.

My hosting was working perfectly and not blocked at all since I could SSH there. Then I realized that I had some jquery loading from a Google CDN and of course the cdn was banned there. And of course CSS fonts from google and youtube videos didnt work either...

I learned 2 lessons.

1) dont rely on CDNs if you want to have global access. Host everything your self and check that your hosting or any of the mirrors can be accessed everywhere.

2) How long Google tentacles are (and we always keep forgetting)...

<comment><USER22> > dont rely on CDNs if you want to have global access

So don't rely on CDNs for their primary purpose?

<comment><USER23> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> WeChat is the replacement for WhatsApp, fully compliant with Chinese censorship controls.

What's mildly disturbing is that many Chinese Americans, both American citizens and not, living in the US use WeChat. They use it because of their cultural and social ties with China. Chinese tourists as well have had increasingly better integration inside the US as well, which would only serve to spread the usage of WeChat to anyone who interacts with Chinese tourists. Tencent is slowly but surely gaining a foothold inside the United States as they roll out more features abroad that made it popular in China.

Are they suspect to these controls as well, despite not being within China? More importantly, whats the legal status of a Chinese corporation with the capability of invading its users privacy under Chinese law, if some users are neither not in China or not Chinese citizens?

<comment><USER20> The only users of WeChat have strong ties to China, and use it for those ties (e.g. WePay). Even in HK and Taiwan, WeChat is not used outside of those reasons.

WeChat working in the US is like UnionPay working in the US. Ya, its great if you are a Chinese tourist or an expat with a Chinese bank account, but it is irrelevant if you aren't, UnionPay isn't going to start taking over the American ATM card market.

<comment><USER25> > Even in HK and Taiwan, WeChat is not used outside of those reasons.

Before someone asks, the approximate equivalent of WeChat in Taiwan is Line. Don't know what it is in HK.

<comment><USER26> The equivalent of WeChat in HK is WhatsApp.

<comment><USER27> Lot of people in HK use Wechat (I have lived in HK). I wouldn't say it's so clear cut. LINE is also popular. But definitely Wechat is substantial especially since there's a lot of people from mainland and also if you got friends in Shenzen, you will use Wechat. I have seen many HK locals (born in HK, not immigrants from mainland) using Wechat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I visited China for a month and my view is limited, but i do not think the average Chen in China cares about this, just like the average John in America doesn't. They are happy to be able to grow their personal GDP as much as they can. A lot of people there are part of the waves of the population that are provided incentives to relocate from rural areas to urban areas. Censorship is their least concern. They are happy to be able to have access to new products and start businesses and help their kids develop as best they can. Throughout my travels in other countries in Asia, i met a few students which will be going to Chinese universities. One of their reasons was that Chinese universities have bigger budgets for research compared to their respective countries. So that was highly attractive to them in their educational development. From walking around i got the impression that China inflates their GDP by constant construction and tear down and construction again. I am inclined to believe that this happens also in the tech industry. This churn creates jobs, companies in a loop and makes the economy look stronger that it actually is. I also saw many empty apartments and was told about this as well. Imagine how much money China would loose if people would solely use western alternatives of the apps they currently use. This GDP churn they have going there could not be done if your population is using solely western products. I do think there is an economic reason as well. I happen to like WeChat, you can do many things with it. I watched this dude i met there buy a hat from a street vendor and payed her with the app, super easy. The convenience that is baked in that app is awesome. I wish we had something like that in the US.

<comment><USER29> I lived in China for many years and you are right. Most Chinese people reaction will be "Meh.." and they will move on with their life and just use a VPN if they really really need WhatsApp.

A lot of western people are now probably frantic to get the WeChat addresses of the Chinese people they only had on WhatsApp, so they can ensure their production line or development people are on track.

We need them more than they need us. That is the problem.

<comment><USER20> I lived in China for 9 years and could never find a working VPN that would last more than a month. So I just didn't bother using anything outside of work. It was ironic that I worked for Microsoft, would use Bing at home, and used Google at work because...I could.

> We need them more than they need us. That is the problem.

Disagree. They still want our business, they will find ways to make it through the disruption. China is not ready to close itself from the rest of the world economically.

<comment><USER30> Did you ever use Shadowsocks in lieu of a VPN? AFAIK, it suffers no traffic disruption (worked great for me when I connected to either my own US-based house or an AWS server in Japan)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't get how China can have WTO "Market Economy" status. It's not just blocking western internet companies, also forced joint ventures and technology transfers don't sound much like "Market Economy" to me.... :-/

<comment><USER32> Developing nations get a lot of leeway - see India's FDI restrictions, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> TechAltar made a video few days ago about censorship in China and what their goals are [0]. He also talked about lengths to which Mark Zuckerberg went to try to get Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp unblocked in China. It was quite shocking.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swuir_7YIPs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swuir_7YIPs)

<comment><USER34> The 5 points according to the video:

1) Married Priscilla Chan

2) Learned Mandarin

3) Joined Tsinghua University

4) Befriended Xijinping

5) Offered to let Xijinping name firstborn

Personally I have trouble believing 1 and 5 were to get Facebook products into China unabridged. 5 sounds like a joke at a dinner party.

<comment><USER35> #5 is really low. I cannot believe someone who did that is a great person.

This guy's baby is just another tool huh?

<comment><USER36> The story goes Zuckerberg asked President Xi to give his unborn baby an Honorary Chinese name.

Which still seems gross, but perhaps less so, given the baby would likely have a more common American name.

<comment><USER35> Even it's the "backup" name, it's not like his wife or his wife's parents are incapable of coming up with a meaningful Chinese name for the child. It's his choice to go ask the president of China to choose it for him (and his wife - if she is like "I am not interested in choosing a Chinese name my child"?).

I can understand this on a personal level. Yeah, I'd understand, If, say, Obama was my friend, I'd want to "ask" the ideas of his for my child's English name, when he comes to my family dinner, sure...

But asking the Chairman of China publicly in a dinner just shows he does care a lot about who has power. Not a friend, not a great thinker, but a fucking president he has a chance to have dinner with the first time. And publicly with many other people. If I'm being cynical, then at least doing it his way was really quite distasteful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> there is an extra but critical reason that I somewhat know why the censorship is getting tougher these days, it has something to do with [https://twitter.com/kwokmiles](https://twitter.com/kwokmiles)

this guy is nowadays' Don Quixote, one person against a powerful government and really made a crack there, this battle has been on for 8 months and it gets more and more interesting as he is challenging the most powerful group of men in China with corruption evidence gathered over the years,each case is weighted more than 100 billion dollars wealth.

to give you two incidents over the last 8 months: 1. VOA(voice of america) live interview with him was stopped in the middle as the leaked info is too strong. 2. youtube was DDOS-ed-to-death for a while when he started live streaming two months ago, which is said never happened before.

</comment><comment><USER38> I would say WhatsApp could use domain fronting like Signal, but that technique requires the adversarial government or ISP to decide that blocking Google.com—or whatever large, important domain is doing the fronting—is worth the cost to block WhatsApp. But China definitely doesn't care about blocking Google!

[https://www.bamsoftware.com/papers/fronting/](https://www.bamsoftware.com/papers/fronting/)

</comment><comment><USER39> Over the past several months, I have had increasing difficulty communicating with suppliers and business partners in China, who have become very frustrated that they can only communicate via Skype. All of their VPNs seem to have been shut down. They can't access Facebook, YouTube, and now WhatsApp.

Does anyone know of a simple workaround that would allow someone inside of mainland China to regain access to what's been blocked recently?

<comment><USER40> Not sure if this would work for you but still... After having a lot of problems communicating with my business partners in China, I bought a second (cheap, chinese!) phone and installed WeChat, Weibo and a host of other apps on it. It became my chinese "channel", completely isolated from my main phone. Working pretty well so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This feels to me like the war on the Internet has entered a new phase.

<comment><USER42> Next step should be enabling censored services to citizens with 4-star+ social scores.

<comment><USER43> reminds me of the 1st episode of the latest Black Mirror season.

<comment><USER44> It's like a really ugly combination of that episode and the waldo episode

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> We (the US) have to start treating the blocking of our internet applications as trade embargoes. They are the future of our economy.

<comment><USER20> China does not officially list the websites it blocks for this reason: they don't want to turn it into a WTO case. If you ask China telecom why Facebook isn't working, they'll say...must be Facebook's fault.

Anyways, the US probably doesn't care that much as we probably make more on trade with China (even American retail marks up China-sourced cheap items), that we don't find it worth rocking the boat over this. Also, by keeping out international services, Chinese services never face competition to become worldwide competitive, meaning they are basically leaving the rest of the world to established mainly-USA players.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm curious if this is really censorship or just a play to further enhance the position of Chinese messaging apps' monopolies.

Question is why wouldn't the US block Chinese sites, apps and services like WeChat, Alibaba, Baidu, etc?

<comment><USER5> Cross-border chats that previously used WhatsApp will now be forced to switch to WeChat, and thus be subject to Chinese gov't monitoring. Also leading to more international installs of WeChat.

If US blocked those sites, nobody would care, except those with ties to China. However, it would be easy to circumvent with VPNs etc., unless of course the US duplicated the GFW.

At any rate, that's rather antithetical to US values.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I interact daily with colleagues from China, and I think it's a lot more problematic to have work resources blocked than WhatsApp.

They cannot even do a simple search with Google. It's frustrating for me, I can only imaging how is for them. I'm even worried to raise the issue to not jeopardize their jobs.

Really sad.

</comment><comment><USER48> It makes sense, as a country you wouldn't want US companies taking over your social media. It's only alarming from a US centric view.

<comment><USER49> I hope this is a joke

<comment><USER50> Well it's very valid reason. Companies like Google and Facebook do influence their users, and do define how they interact.

So banning the big tech companies is kind of protection against this, as US influence can be really toxic for local businesses. Even the EU starts to fight back against them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Naomi Wu's comment on China's surveillance: "That's basically the social contract. Someone grabs your purse, you go to the police station, they show you the video, usually catch them. ... Honestly, I hear more anger on Weibo/Wechat when there's _not_ camera footage of a crime than any unhappiness over cameras on the street etc."[1]

[1] [https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg?lang=en](https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg?lang=en)

<comment><USER52> the UK does _tons_ of video surveillance of public spaces. much much more than the US, where cameras are often low-res garbage, broken or hacked for use in botnets.

<comment><USER51> In the UK, if you're robbed can you go to a police station, see the video, and get the cops started on finding the robber?

<comment><USER52> i don't know about that.

i do know that some UK police departments have officers watching some public spaces in real time. they can sometimes recognize and intercept known offenders before a crime occurs.

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Lot of posts about the economic effects of this. From my armchair this looks to be political more than economic. China wants to be in control of how their citizens communicate.

They don't trust Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg or any of the US government. Letting their citizens chat on an encrypted channel made by a foreign "superpower" seems disingenuous.

It's not as if Americans are going to boycott Chinese goods, so I don't see any direct loss for China here.

</comment><comment><USER54> Too much concern about if China can innovate and create Western alternatives. I don't think it's about that at all. It's about privacy and the freedom to choose.

That Chinese people cannot choose what they use and how they can live their lives online what is private and what isn't is the biggest issue with the WhatsApp move along with other services.

It would be sad to be Chinese living in China as the government takes choices away from me and my people.

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm in a relocation in China for the past 2.5 years, and it was obvious this is coming since they released end to end encryption back in 2016. China is not a democracy, surveillance is one of the most important issues in China (see link), and allowing their citizen to talk outside of their reach of surveillance is unacceptable. Wechat - the so-called Whatsapp + Facebook all- in-one app (Wechat can be the only app on your phone) is a 1) fantastic app and extremely innovative, Many things to learn from it in the west. 2) perfectly demonstrates how the Chinese government pushes for centralization, for the sake of government supervision. (have all the users in just one place, talking to their friends, ordering food, flights, trains, paying for everything, ordering things online etc.

*[https://twitter.com/0XDEDBEEF/status/912026226658652160](https://twitter.com/0XDEDBEEF/status/912026226658652160)

</comment><comment><USER56> Why can't steganography be used on top on the Chinese government endorsed app (WeChat)?

It wouldn't have to use images, it could use any data in the system or even spread it amount mutilple apps within WeChat.

By the way, a couple suggestions if you haven't used WeChat:

1) There is a really nice, canonical one pager out there for explaining WeChat to Americans, I highly recommended it.

2) Its important to note that WeChat despite its name, is miles away from being a simple chat app. It's an entire platform, almost OS like, complete with its own apps within an app. Their platform is incredibly rich, to the point that any significant business has some services available or at least a presence.

Before going to China on business I hadn't heard much about it, and only knew it existed because of some Chinese friends. However if you are planning a trip to China, go ahead an install it now because it's ubiquitous.

There is an English version and last time I checked it was reasonably up to date, although seemed to be missing a few features.

</comment><comment><USER29> Big news. Which one are safe now (in US and China)? Telegram??

I remember back in the days, when you wrote "fuck" in Skype from China and it would get censored. Which one is a trusted messenger these days?

<comment><USER5> Signal. Maybe Wire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> "The blocking of WhatsApp text messages suggests that China's censors may have developed specialized software to interfere with such messages"

They don't need any 'specialized software'. You can just block the list of hostnames and IP address, found here: [https://github.com/ukanth/afwall/wiki/HOWTO-blocking- WhatsAp...](https://github.com/ukanth/afwall/wiki/HOWTO-blocking-WhatsApp)

</comment><comment><USER58> I'm seriously wondering why we open up our markets to China, if they won't ever allow our companies to thrive there.

They shouldn't be allowed to take over companies too.

<comment><USER20> Many of our companies do thrive in china, and the rich people in the USA make lots of money off the arrangement. Don't think for a second that the relationship is one sided.

Still, china could be a bit more fair and symmetrical in our trading relationship.

<comment><USER58> Perhaps you are not aware of how hard it is to get your money out of China.

And others end in 'partnerships'

<comment><USER20> Having done it myself many times, I'm totally aware. Thankfully, as a foreigner or foreign company, I only need to present tax receipts. Still a PITA, but there are no hard limits at least.

<comment><USER58> Haven't ever done it, but at least I see it's a PITA. As I thought :p

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I had a long layover in Shanghai recently and was a bit surprised that so many of the web sites I use regularly were blocked.

It seems all google products were blocked including gmail and google voice which are my primary means of communication.

Are there many Android users in China?

</comment><comment><USER60> Why does the US allow China to block so many American technologies? To me this is almost akin to banning the import of American cars, or any other domestic export.

The United States has such a huge trade deficit with China, you would think the government would fight for whatever little "export" they can get, whether it be a technological export or otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is just wealth destruction. Government intervention will create an artificial higher demand for those services. Maybe the same developers would be building something else that THEY would believe would be about more interesting or profitable.

So chinese will miss those OTHER OPPORTUNITIES to innovate (even if still innovates, it could be "even better"), or other opportunities to "copy cat" other services. The question is: who should decide whats done and whats not done? The consumer or the government?

Read Bastiat. It's easy and obvious to point at something that's being built by government or (indirectly) by the government intervention. The hard part, that needs some economics stretching, is to wonder about the invisible, non- existing projects that actually are never felt missed.

</comment><comment> Chiba-City I have no privileged state secret information to disclose. But a former employee of mine (and Orbital Sciences, NSA before that) was in Queen Noor Of Jordan's entourage. WhatsApp was one of the dominant messaging apps in the Arab Spring aftermath. I suspect the miraculous purchase price might reflect that. I could be wrong. Boy genius working class hero miracle narratives should be discounted however possible for better business lesson learning. WhatsApp is a rounding error in China and likely a genuine military or trade secrets security threat. Our proclamations of self-identity as guardians of democracy are as important to us as our own enforcement and good example. Focus on what and who matters where.

</comment><comment><USER62> It's like China and England are competing to see who can have the least amount of Internet freedom.

<comment><USER63> oh, but England "had Locke,... or a Hobbes" (see comment above)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I wonder if steganography + encryption will be the way past internet censorship.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#Digital_messages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#Digital_messages)

</comment><comment><USER65> Does OpenVPN still work, in normal or PSK mode? I wonder if at some point their filtering gets smart enough that they will just turn it over to a whitelist, or worse, straying too far from the "norm user" gets you a visit from police.

<comment><USER66> Regular openvpn sees disruptions. They sniff out the ip addresses that sees vpn traffic and blocks them. You can get a different ip and have it run (or do multi-encapsulated tunneling), but in my opinion, nothing about this issue is technological. At the very end, if you try to evade too many times, the government just tells the telco not to sell any internet access to you. Or get the police to show up at your residence.

Regular Chinese citizens get jailed for 50+ years all the time for doing things online. If you are foreign, they can revoke your visa.

<comment><USER67> If you are foreign, in a first tier city, just pay for the corporate internet (the unblocked version) in a lot of office districts.

The government knows that the expats aren't their customer for censorship, they just want to make it inconvenient enough for their citizens to get to the new york times or the scmp.

Have people actually gotten visa's revoked, that would be a crazy escalation by the MPS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> China has been going on a ban spree lately. First, they turn the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency world on its head banning Bitcoin and other restrictions and now WhatsApp is being banned. What is banned next?

</comment><comment><USER69> Chinese debt is a ticking time bomb. [http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese- debt-risk-to-financia...](http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-debt-risk-to- financial-stability-2017-9)

When (not if) it goes off, it'll not only be a huge shock to the world economy, it'll most likely also result in huge unrest inside China. The only political tool the communist party has known is to suppress dissent. I expect things to get worse in the next few years... not better.

</comment><comment><USER70> In fact, this is the government's conspiracy. Now WeChat a lot of data by the government control, always monitor people's remarks. Why to prohibit whatsup, because because of a broke the Chinese government to lead the corruption of the rich, Guo Wengui. The domestic intelligence provider used whatsup to provide him with information, so the government began to suppress whatsup。[https://youtu.be/DWVxf2ARuOg](https://youtu.be/DWVxf2ARuOg)

</comment><comment><USER71> The most surprising thing to me is that WhatsApp was not already blocked in China. I'd just assumed it would have been, given so many other Western messaging apps are.

</comment><comment><USER72> For what it's worth, the Matrix protocol (matrix.org) isn't blocked in China at all to our knowledge, meaning folks get both decentralised & e2e encrypted comms. Given the transport is just HTTPS and can hit any arbitrary server, it's relatively hard to fingerprint and block in the manner that WhatsApp has been.

</comment><comment><USER73> The article mentions that, as in years before, the Chinese tighten censorship when important party meetings or other events of political significance come up. But does anyone know if the longer term trend is toward more isolation of the Chinese internet (or intranet, almost) or did the overall level of censorship stay constant over the last few years?

</comment><comment><USER56> It's interesting that for so long there was conventional wisdom suggesting a large reason the Soviet Union economy failed due to inefficiencies of communism and oppression.

We now know not only did that not stop China, it's not clear that the ceiling of economic success of their system has been determined.

<comment><USER74> China has a market economy - more government controlled and regulated than the west - but it's not centrally planned economy like the Soviet Union. They tried that in the past - google Great Leap Forward to see how it ended up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> As long as China isn't breaking any WTO rules, they are free to block internet services and apps. If other countries aren't happy with this, they should change the WTO rules. If WTO rules are being broke, then clearly those rules have no teeth.

Why would China block things? Various excellent reasons are discussed in this thread, and they all boil down to political and commercial.

Are the Chinese people harmed? I would argue not. None of these "services" do anything really important nor irreplaceable. Most are just new spins on ancient tech like email and FTP, and the new versions that are blocked don't really have any differentiating features compared to what is available locally. The feature that is new is Digital Identity.

And so my final thought is that they are playing a long game with respect to digital identity - which is the long game of most of these blocked services. In Cyberspace, am I going to be Chinese or American? I aM not Chinese, but I expect that most Chinese will want to also be Chinese in Cyberspace, and so the Chinese government is fulfilling that desire.

<comment><USER76> You do know that Wechat's chat history stored in Tencent's database in plain text? The authorisation could check/monitor any Chinese citizen who uses Wechat, if they say something bad about the government or spread the rumours of some officials corruptions, they will be in big trouble?!? How do you mean Chinese people are not harmed? Their privacy is absolutely harmed and they have less choices for chatting and that's what the Chinese government wants - they want everyone in China to use Wechat so they could absolutely control/monitor

<comment><USER30> Wechat claims they don't hold logs on disk:

[http://help.wechat.com/cgi-bin/micromsg- bin/oshelpcenter?opc...](http://help.wechat.com/cgi-bin/micromsg- bin/oshelpcenter?opcode=2&id=150915Ev6NF3150915fYRraQ&lang=en&plat=android&Channel=helpcenter)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Yeah, isolating yourself from the outside world will cause you to lose. See: North Korea.

</comment><comment><USER78> I think in the long run we will see silo-driller middleware overcoming all these obsticles as service.

You specify which of your We-Chat friends shall get your facebook updates and the bridge middleware takes care.

</comment><comment><USER79> This Tech Altar video is very relevant to the topic:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swuir_7YIPs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swuir_7YIPs)

</comment><comment><USER80> Anything that harms FB directly or indirectly is a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER81> Good move China. Now if the rest of the world could also block anything facebook so the spying would be contained to the US it would be great.

</comment><comment><USER82> Thou-Shall-Not-Do-Business-With-Dictatorships!

</comment><comment><USER83> Aside from the speculation about why, does anyone have any speculation about HOW this disruption is occurring?

</comment><comment><USER84> From a search and social standpoint, when I was in China, only Bing and Wechat worked.

Instagram, etc. wouldn't refresh.

</comment><comment><USER85> I'm currently on a buisness trip in china, had to switch to wire which is still working.

</comment><comment><USER86> How does the blocking actually happen?

What if people used a decentralized service, that worked over https?

<comment><USER87> All traffic to/from some IP addresses is blocked, additionally all Chinese DNS servers respond with random A records when the domain name is banned, for example:

      $ host facebook.com 220.127.116.11
      facebook.com            A       126.96.36.199
      $ host facebook.com 22.214.171.124
      facebook.com            A       243.185.187.39
      $ host facebook.com 184.108.40.206
      facebook.com            A       243.185.187.39
      $ host facebook.com 18.104.22.168
      facebook.com            A       126.96.36.199
      $ host facebook.com 184.108.40.206
      facebook.com            A       220.127.116.11

(184.108.40.206 is an open resolver in China)

<comment><USER88> So you can get around the block if you use 220.127.116.11 for DNS?

<comment><USER89> No you can't, you will still get a connection reset error

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> What are the downsides for 1) China and 2) chinese citizens from an objective PoV?

</comment><comment><USER91> why not.. when they already have this : [https://twitter.com/0XDEDBEEF/status/912026226658652160](https://twitter.com/0XDEDBEEF/status/912026226658652160)

</comment><comment><USER92> coincidentally, I just bootstrapped my own Tor exit node in the USA... Hopefully Chinese and everyone else whose freedom of speech is usurped can still hook up to the Tor network.

</comment><comment><USER93> What about Telegram?

<comment><USER94> Was blocked two years ago

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> The powerful will always get away with wrongdoings.

</comment><comment><USER96> Is Viber working or is that on the kill list as well?

</comment><comment><USER97> God, living in China sounds like absolute hell.

</comment><comment><USER98> And Facebooks blocks free speech.

In the race to control what people say, think and see, between the governments and the mega corporations, it's the people who are losing.

China blocks whatsapp... meh.

</comment><comment><USER99> USA should block Chinase chat apps too.

</comment><comment><USER100> This had not already been blocked?

</comment><comment><USER101> does this kind of thing violate any trade agreements between US and china? should it?

<comment><USER102> To my knowledge it does not, but it should.

Censorship is a weak attempt at mind control, which is a bit worse than chattel slavery on the list of heinous things that humans do to one another.

Not only that, but in order to implement it effectively, you must be omnipresent, with a finger in every ear and a hand over every mouth. The concentration of power necessary to do that is an open invitation to corruption.

If I had significant influence over US trade agreements, the degree to which ordinary citizens had open and unfettered access to information would factor into every last one of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> China is like a GIANT Jail :)

<comment><USER20> With really good food then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> Well done, China.

</comment><comment><USER105> Yawn... Wechat already dominates and is generally better.

Watching them try to ban bitcoin (another US invention) is more interesting.

</comment><comment><USER106> Duplicate of this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15332147](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15332147)

<comment><USER107> If that other link (yours, I see) actually had discussion, this might be a useful contribution to post here. But it doesn't.

Sorry mate, your submission didn't catch the fire of the kindling; no need to repost it here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> So brown nosing with comrade Jinping did not have a desired result. For those not aware: Zuck asked him to name his first born. Jinping declined. :-)

<comment><USER109> Interesting. Got a link that backs up this rather surreal claim?

<comment><USER110> > At a White House dinner in 2015, Mr. Zuckerberg had even asked the Chinese > president, Xi Jinping, whether Mr. Xi might offer a Chinese name for his > soon-to-be-born first child — usually a privilege reserved for older > relatives, or sometimes a fortune teller. Mr. Xi declined, according to a > person briefed on the matter.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/technology/facebook- gover...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/17/technology/facebook-government- regulations.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> aaron-lebo Well, at least Mark didn't sacrifice his child for that.

What's the end game here? In the early 2000s it seemed like China was going to become this liberal democracy, but it just seems like the government is getting more and more power and control. Is there any sign this (and the rise of several authoritarians) is gonna stop?

This made me think of Fukuyama (1989):

 _What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind 's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man)

That looks really funny in hindsight. He's actually changed his position:

[http://www.npr.org/2017/04/04/522554630/francis-fukuyama- on-...](http://www.npr.org/2017/04/04/522554630/francis-fukuyama-on-why- liberal-democracy-is-in-trouble)

<comment><USER111> I don't think there's any sign it will stop. The standard prediction used to be that prosperity would bring democracy, but that's looking to be either wishful thinking or bad extrapolation from past events.

<comment><USER112> Democracy and prosperity are orthogonal concepts. I agree both of them are good but prosperity without democracy exist (China and in some sense Singapore) and democracy without prosperity also exists (everywhere).

<comment><USER113> > prosperity without democracy exist

There has never been a large nation example of that in world history. China has yet to get there in any broad sense. Further, there are exceptionally few examples of it, regardless of nation size. A solid 80% to 90% of the prosperous, well developed nations use representative government systems, and not a single large nation that is prosperous at the median doesn't. Most of the exceptions are smaller, resource nations like Qatar (even Saudi Arabia hasn't achieved high-level prosperity at the median, their median income is nearly 1/3 that of the US).

Here's the list of nations that are prosperous at the median -

Democratic: US, Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Ireland, Japan, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, Spain, Israel, South Korea

Not Democratic: Singapore, Qatar, Kuwait, Brunei, UAE

Questionable inclusions: Czech, Portugal, Taiwan, Slovenia, Greece, Estonia, Slovakia; vs Saudi Arabia on the other side

I don't see how this could be any more blatant.

<comment><USER114> Are you saying that before democracy appeared (300 or so years ago) humankind didn't prosper economically, financially and culturally ?

<comment><USER115> In the modern sense of the term, they did not. 300 years ago, almost everyone alive would be considered catastrophically poor by modern standards, and even the elites would be considered to have some serious gaps in their wealth.

This is relevant because one of the perennial questions of history has been "Why didn't high tech civilization arise centuries or millenia earlier?", and governance issues like this are at least one of the defensible answers. Though not the only one by any means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER116> > By blocking the heavily encrypted WhatsApp service while making less secure > applications like WeChat available to the public, the Chinese government has > herded its internet users toward methods of communication that it can > reliably monitor.

How could they possibly monitor millions of messages sent per hour? Even if they have some ML / Bot, what are the odds that they'll miss some protest, or plot??

<comment><USER117> > _Even if they have some ML / Bot, what are the odds that they'll miss some > protest, or plot??_

Do they need 100% accuracy for it to be effective? Nothing of this sort is, and that's accepted as part of using it. Of course people work to minimize false positives and false negatives, but it's understood that they can't be reduced to 0.</comment></comment>


Learning from Turing's silver hoard (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-markets-saft/saft-on-wealth-learning-from-turings-silver-hoard-idUSKCN0UY2OC <comment><USER2> I worked on a farm in the former West Germany (BRD), before the re- unification, not far over the border from East Germany (DDR). The proprietor's family was leasing the historic farmstead. His family's original farm had been just over the border in the DDR, and of course appropriated by the government. At the point they learned the American occupiers were withdrawing and they would be in the Russian occupation zone, they high-tailed it into the American occupation zone.

They visited me in America a couple years after The Wall fell, and he told me the rest of the story. Apparently his father's initial plan was to stick it out and see how things unfolded, but first they buried the family silver in the forest. He was in his early teens and supplied the teenage labor.

When they could return after the wall fell, he remembered roughly where the hoard should be. It took him a couple days with a metal detector, but they found it. He was very lucky because it was very near where the DDR had done trenching for the boarder hazards employed all along the east/west border. Some of the pieces were in very bad shape after 45 years underground, but most of it could be restored.

<comment><USER3> how has that silver been spent?

<comment><USER2> family silver, as in definition n. 4

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/silver](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/silver)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I highly recommend Turing's biography "Alan Turing: The Enigma" from which this story is taken. It's a great book. Very detailed and well researched. Author dives into many topics related to Turing's work like math, ai, cryptography.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a terrible analysis. Neither of the investing mistakes he supposedly made are applicable to his case. Nor was his method "intended to wring the last cent of profit out of a good trade over capitalizing more safely on his market prediction". He feared seizure! Losing a large proportion or all of your capital is not "the last cent".

<comment><USER6> I agree. Interesting anecdote followed by simply moronic commentary tacked on to the end. And no, diversification is not a 'free lunch'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My relatives did this when fleeing from the bolsheviks. When they returned a hotel had been built where they buried their treasure.

So much for the family fortune. They owned gemstone mines.

<comment><USER8> Is it safe to say that the construction crew who excavated the foundation had a very good Christmas that year?

<comment> mark-r If they used heavy equipment to do the digging, it's unlikely they even saw the cache.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This would have made a nice scene in that awful Imitation Game film, unlike the rubbish they actually put in (as well as other tales of the real Turing - the gas mask worn during hay fever season, for example).

<comment><USER10> It was used in the semi-historical Cryptonomicon

[https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Lw-00wTgBy8C&pg=PA173&l...](https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Lw-00wTgBy8C&pg=PA173&lpg=PA173&dq=cryptonomicon+turing+silver&source=bl&ots=Cz2TIKD5U2&sig=ACfU3U0qwgwOd3GH9WPnXwtZyeVqHHkmBw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi73ezVm9znAhXBW3wKHTp3CecQ6AEwBXoECAwQAQ#v=onepage&q=cryptonomicon%20turing%20silver&f=false)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > like so many very successful and brilliant people Turing was wildly over- > confident in his own analysis

This is so common, yet most individuals that fall into this trap will never recognize it.

<comment><USER12> I thought that was a strange takeaway for the article to take. His analysis was _correct_. He was undone by a factor he didn't even contemplate. His confidence in his "analysis" was spot on.

There's definitely a lesson here, but I would not call it over-confidence. If the bank had gone under, would that have been called over-confidence on the part of his friend? At some point, every mistake of any kind whatsoever is called "over-confidence".

<comment><USER13> Over-competence at the hiding game. ;(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Number one lesson: Don't bury stuff and expect to find it later.

Seriously, folks. I grew up around a bunch of preppers and general outside- the-law folks. Burying things in ammo cans was kind of a pastime of a lot of people I knew.

It's _really_ hard to find something like that a year or two later, even if you think you know exactly where it is.

I've been the person wielding the shovel to dig up a box of important stuff before. (Thankfully, not mine, I was just the teenage labor.) We dug a lot and never found it. Also, tree roots grow over/through things and people _love_ to bury things at the base of a tree. Kinda hard to dig through roots.

Don't bury things you want to find later.

<comment><USER15> The story asserts the landmarks changed, but can't you pick landmarks that won't change? Better yet, use GPS and grab the Lat/Long.

<comment><USER14> That's not as accurate as you think unless you've got a full geodetic antenna. (i.e. $200k worth of equipment + a lot of permits to be allowed to have/use it) Getting to within +/\- 30m doesn't help a ton when you're digging a hole to find a small box.

With geocaching, you've got something to look for. You get close-ish and then do an easter egg hunt. When it's beneath the ground, it's really hard to "look". Finding easter eggs with a shovel ain't my cup of tea.

<comment><USER16> Doesn't modern GPS claim +/\- 3 meters, with a clear enough signal? (Which is still a heckuva lot of dirt to shift.)

<comment><USER14> Given nearby local ground-based correction stations (e.g. WAAS) it can use and flat terrain, yeah, you can certainly get that kind of accuracy.

In practice, though, I've spent a fair bit of time trying to re-occupy sites taken with handheld GPS receivers. (I'm a geologist -- it comes up a lot) 30m is a better representation of typical repeatability for a consumer-grade handheld unit or a phone.

You're often on the side of a hill, so you can't see the full constellation. If you don't have line-of-sight to more than a few satellites, you risk an inaccurate location. You're often in highly remote areas, so WAAS doesn't always help (it's based on proximity to a ground station). If you don't have WAAS, you're at the risk of atmospheric effects significantly affecting your accuracy.

There's also the user error side: You might have the handheld set to display in NAD27 one time and WGS84 another, which can easily offset the same lat/long by several hundred meters.

+/\- 3m with consumer GPS is definitely possible, but that's for ideal conditions. You're rarely working with ideal conditions in the field.

<comment><USER17> The best i've ever personally got with a handheld GPS under actual work conditions was +/\- 15m. I've gotten +/\- 5m in large open areas lacking trees, mountains or large rock formations but areas without any of those things are rare.

Weather conditions can make a big difference. In stormy or rainy weather I was lucky if I could get +/-20m

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't know what it is, but the thought of Turing running around Bletchley park burying silver ingots is hilarious to me.

Also, I wonder if anyone has found them since. Anyone with a metal detector up for a bit of a project?

<comment><USER16> It's possible the ingots are still there, but I think the more interesting bet would be "Do you think they were found before or after Turing went looking?"

It's not entirely beyond the realm of the possible that a security guard saw Turing bury something, checked what it was 10 minutes after Turing left, and then quietly pocketed the ingot when it turned out to be money and not a security threat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Don't leave your money by a fence post in the snow either

<comment><USER8> What the heck do ya mean?

<comment><USER20> Think it's a reference to Fargo - a Coen brothers film and TV series

<comment><USER21> Both were: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW9vmiop2YU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW9vmiop2YU)

<comment><USER20> Oops</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Oh shit, my weekend project turned into an App Store Best New App (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://tannerchristensen.com/blog/2018/12/30/oh-shit-my-weekend-project-turned-into-an-app-store-best-new-app <comment><USER2> > "Snaplight serves an extremely niche need: mine."

There is a subtle brilliance in this sentence. With this recognition comes the permission to not try adding a mountain of features and complicating matters. Build something you will use. Solve a problem you have. Enjoy the process and accept the vulnerability that comes with shipping something to the world. Chances are good things will come of it.

<comment><USER3> I recently had a similar experience: I watch a lot of YouTube videos and I like reading through the comments. Often, comments quote specific timestamps from the video and I would find it a pain to keep scrolling between the comment section at the bottom of the page and the video at the top and then find the specific time in the video that the comment was talking about.

So, I created a Chrome extension that surfaces YouTube comments that have timestamps right below the video, around the time that the comment contains. And, then disappears it after a few seconds.

It was fun to make and in the end, it solved a very specific problem that I was facing.

Link: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-timed- comm...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/youtube-timed- comments/mfmjnhncafdcdegeiamnjpnjgmmkkaal)

<comment><USER4> I had a similar case... i want to be able to download interesting videos with youtube-dl in case they or me go offline but i found having to copy the url, open a command line, move the proper folder, etc, type youtube-dl and paste the url be a bit cumbersome, so i wrote a Firefox extension to do all that for me.

This is extremely specific (and i had to switch to Firefox Developer Edition to do that since the mainline one doesn't allow unsigned extensions) but it was helpful and i got to learn how to make extensions for personal use (though the whole process to call an external program was a convoluted PITA involving adding registry entries, writing Python scripts to parse JSON, etc... meh).

<comment><USER5> For a similar usecase I settled on writing a bash script along the lines of

      PARAM=`xclip -o -selection clipboard`
      notify-send downloading $PARAM
      youtube-dl $PARAM

And setting a keyboard shortcut to invoke it, so downloading is just

      CTRL+L (select URL)
      CTRL+C (copy selection)
      CTRL+ALT+D (trigger download script)

<comment><USER6> Damn Son! I have had the same issue and your solution is so face palm simple! Excellent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "All-in-all the project took me an hour to program"

Come on, it's more than that. Being compliant to Apple Developer Guidelines takes some more time.

<comment> _-___________-_ That's a strange statement. It's a very simple app, which specific guidelines do you think should have taken significant time for him to write code that complies to?

In my experience the guidelines are mostly common sense once you get used to the "Apple way", and are straightforward to comply with, especially if you're already familiar with them (OP had submitted several apps before).

<comment><USER7> still, claiming to hacking a mobile app together in one hour is something strange as well. Does the "hour of code" includes setting up project in the IDE, setting a repo, testing it, making it AppStore-ready?

Options are:

a. you have already the code somewhere (own sources, StackOverflow, GitHub, etc.) b. you are bluffing

<comment><USER8> I could believe it if you counted only the time taken to type just literal code. Probably discounted the time it would take to build the UI .xib, wire up all the event-handler delegates, and set all your layout constraints for the various screen sizes.

And doesn't this use the camera and/or photos API? Not hard, but somewhat time consuming to set up your boilerplate for these. Also handling permissions request, response, & error handling. Probably copy/pasted from another project so it wouldn't count?

Yeah I'm skeptical, but also sounds like a fun challenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just to be clear: the app makes ~20 downloads per day (checked on App Annie premium and Sensor Tower premium) except for the fact that you change the price from paid to free multiple times, causing multiple spikes in downloads generated by sites like [https://www.148apps.com/](https://www.148apps.com/) and [https://appadvice.com/apps-gone-free](https://appadvice.com/apps-gone- free) which basically list all apps that have become free from paid.

So claiming `about 10,000 downloads each week` is not very correct.

<comment> yoz-y I assume that the author has better visibility to actual download numbers than App Annie or Sensor Tower. I assume they just got the number from the App Store connect.

That is, apple highlights are massively more impactful that any other venue. My app had reviews in multiple publications and I average about 200 downloads per week, at around 4500 impressions. It got featured once in some list (in Thailand) and I got about 1 million impressions per day. Sadly, the app was paid (and not translated) at the time so no sales.

10k downloads per week is legitimately impressive for this kind of app. Kudos

<comment><USER9> I work on models like those of Sensor Tower and App Annie use to estimate downloads. They are extremely precise, the cross-validated error is << 10% for apps that are this small, and in the US (it increases with much bigger apps in countries where little data is available).

<comment><USER10> In general, could you tell a bit about how do app downloads get estimated? Now that I'm thinking about it, I think the first way to do it is to correlate the amount of comments in your particular app section to downloads numbers that you do know and extrapolate that out, assuming that comments/downloads ratio stay the same within a particular app category.

One could test this hypothesis out on different YouTube video categories for which this obviously is known to give the assumption some quick strength or falsification.

Anyways, this is the first time I'm thinking about this question at all. I'm curious what you're allowed/able to tell us.

<comment><USER9> There is a public ranking of apps ranked by downloads in the app store. If you know how many downloads correspond to what position in the chart (e.g. number 100 makes ~1000 downloads), you can fit a log regression to determine the number of downloads given the ranking in the category. I am oversimplifying because you also need to take into account seasonality and time trends (e.g. the app store is always expanding), but overall fits are very very precise (unless you get near the top positions, which are those for which they have more problems in estimating). Ah, and if you wonder where the data comes from, App Annie and Sensor Tower get data for downloads to fit their models directly from tens of thousands of developers that share it with them in exchange for free analytics,

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > All-in-all the project took me an hour to program

That's amazing. I don't think I've ever written anything usable in an hour.

<comment><USER12> He's working in a space he has mastery. Like, look at this legend with his live note taking of Inkscape + Latex. I would have been like two orders of magnitude slower [https://castel.dev/post/lecture- notes-2/](https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-2/)

<comment><USER13> Unrelated to op, never seen this link before, super cool thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > As of March 2017, two years after launching Snaplight, it's still going > strong with about 10,000 downloads each week.

Wow. I've been hearing for years that the gold rush of 99 cent apps on the App Store was done for, but this kinda gives me hope. I might get around to finally finishing any app I've worked on...

<comment><USER15> Snaplight is a free app though, so while the 10k number is high I think it would be hardly reached if he had placed a 99 cent tag on it, given the niche. Some people (me included) like to download and try new apps, only to remove them after the utility hasn't proven valuable enough.

That shouldn't stop you from finishing your app though. Building and later publishing an app to your audience can be an awesome experience. Go for it!

<comment><USER16> From the original screenshot in the post, it looks like it debuted at $0.99, I wonder if there's a way to look up App Store price history

<comment><USER15> You're right, totally missed from the screenshot and based my comment on the current App Store data.

I looked the app on Appannie (non paid account) and the pricing history is quite interesting:

26 Mar 2017 - 0.99 to Free

29 Mar 2017 - Free to 0.99

19 Jul 2017 - 0.99 to 1.99

20 Jul 2017 - 1.99 to Free

02 Aug 2017 - Free to 0.99

04 Feb 2018 - 0.99 to Free

10 Feb 2018 - Free to 0.99

03 Mar 2018 - 0.99 to Free

27 Mar 2018 - Free to 0.99

04 Dec 2018 - 0.99 to Free

03 May 2019 - Free to 0.99

05 Sep 2019 - 0.99 to Free

From the above details, it was a paid app for most of it's time. I wonder why the developer played with the pricing as much though?

<comment><USER17> I just looked at the lifetime stats for the app and in total it only ever generated ~$4,000 in profit.

I would often change the price to 1. See if I could squeeze a few more dollars out of the work and 2. Generate more downloads.

A fun "trick" for getting more downloads is to temporarily make a paid app free, as many, many people follow "Apps Gone Free" type of bots or directories and if your app has any substantial numbers behind it more people tend to notice when it switches to free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The year should say 2015. Would be nice to know some more stats, maybe a downloads graph? When was is made free, and why?

</comment><comment><USER19> I had a similar itch and built a similar app, except snippets are captured as searchable text and organised by books [1]. It was only ever my second app and app building for me is as much about the journey as the destination so it took me a lot longer than 1h/24h.

I agree with the premise of the article ie build small, monetize, learn.

Other lessons I've learned: Promotion is harder than building. It's pretty hard to get more than a few downloads per day. Free or not, once it's out there your users will make demands. I got emails from all over the world requesting all sorts of new features. Simple is better. Almost all feedback I got was that the app did one thing well (actually good enough). Try different monetisation strategies.

[1] Key Passages [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/key-passages-study- assistant/i...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/key-passages-study- assistant/id1442938779)

</comment><comment><USER20> While the article was last updated 2018, I think 2015 is more appropriate.

</comment><comment> King-Aaron There's a strange double-scrollbar in the #content div, that makes viewing on a desktop a little awkward

(Chrome/ Win10)

<comment><USER21> Which could be easily fixed by setting the body height from 100% to 100vh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > I held my place in the book with one hand while thumbing through the app > store on my phone in the other, unable to find an app that could accomplish > what I was looking for. Then an idea suddenly struck me: I could easily > create — or try to create — an app that allows me to highlight and share > quotes from the books I'm reading.

This, my dear, is what an application should be created for -- To help resolve real problems and improve lives.

"Best New App" is well desired.

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting how the current version only has 5 ratings, but the author at the time says it received 10,000 per week. We would never know this and could never be able to assign validation to this app from the metrics we see in passing

I find that interesting

<comment><USER24> I've had an app that kind of blew up and grew to thousands of users in several weeks and then reach top 200 Lifestyle Apps on Appstore. It also had more than 100 ratings with an avg rating of 4.6. However I stopped updating a long time ago and removed it from Appstore, I noticed basically that old ratings get erased after version updates to the app which I guess make sense as it ensures reviews are actually of the current version of the app so.I guess Snaplight just died in popularity after several updates.

<comment><USER25> This makes sense in a way, but also seems like it has bad incentives for developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder how much the app name and icon contributed to the success. The name is unique while still having the know "snap" as trigger in there, and the icon is also quite neat and clean.

<comment><USER27> The video was also very good, I imagine Apple wants to promote apps that have nice intros.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wow this is actually scratching an itch of mine now. I love the kindle feature of saving / sharing quotes and have been wanting something for offline. Awesome work Tanner!

</comment><comment><USER29> It makes me sad that features are now paid apps. Imagine if every tool in GIMP was a separate app.

This app should be a feature of a default Paint-like app.

<comment><USER30> In some ways I think this is the environment Apple has cultivated (maybe not deliberately) over the years. Basic features like cut & paste are left out, and then announced in a later version to as though it's this great innovation. Not that this particular app is such a basic feature, but illustrates the reasons why there are so many single-function utility apps. And of course the danger of them for their developers, if they rely on them for their livelihood, is that Apple will at any moment swoop in and copy the most popular ones. For the record, I'm not sure there's anything wrong with that on its own, but there is when Apple doesn't let developers access iOS as deeply as they do themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't know what troubles me more:

1\. a clearly-expert developer bragging about 1 hour to write hit app then telling everyone to basically live the dream chicken soup for the soul bs

2\. people who experience increased anxiety from said wampeter/foma/granfalloon* because they haven't wildly succeeded

My brain to me: Welcome to 2019.

* See: Kurt Vonnegut

</comment><comment><USER32> Sounds cool, but the scratch your itch advice isn't for everyone. Most everything I would want as an app, maybe 1% of the population would every even consider using, and that's assuming they knew about it.

<comment><USER30> Isn't that the point of the statement though? You do it for yourself, not because anyone else at all might want to use it. Then if you toss it up on the app store and anyone does actually use it, it's just a happy upside.

<comment><USER32> It would make more sense if the example were of an app no one ever knew about, if that really was the case. His app provided more of a counterexample, if what you're saying is true.

<comment><USER30> I took the fact that his app became popular as a happy accident. That he made it mostly to satisfy himself, because he was, in his words, "scratching his own itch". That it worked out on the app store was just a nice benefit, but not really part of the motivation. Or such was my interpretation, maybe I have it wrong.

<comment><USER17> Exactly right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What if you don't have any itch? Seriously.

<comment><USER34> That's okay, and there's no shame in working a 9 to 5 job in that case. Not everyone is cut out to (nor should) be an entrepreneur.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hunblebrag much?

<comment><USER28> I don't think this is a humblebrag. It's a success story, and we should celebrate those. There's nothing wrong with being excited about something turning into more of a success than expected, and there are a lot of general values in the post that may be broadly encouraging to folks here.</comment></comment>


First "Photos" of Ocean Carbon Molecules Hold Clues to Future Warming - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/first-photos-of-ocean-carbon-molecules-hold-clues-to-future-warming/ <comment><USER2> A bit of fearmongering IMHO; these carcasses are what in a few thousand (million?) years will become oil. The process of dead sea creatures accumulating on the sea floor and getting covered in sediment is nothing new.

Ironically it's humans pumping up these carbon stores (oil) and burning them that's causing all this.

<comment><USER3> « These microscopic ghosts contain a reservoir of carbon estimated at a staggering 662 gigatons—200 times greater than the amount stored in all living plants and animals—that could come back to haunt us if unleashed from its watery grave as planet-warming carbon dioxide. »

...yes, Scientific American, yes it could. That's exactly what we're doing. -.-

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "The deeper molecules were easier because their surface was plainer."

I can't tell, is this is a mistaken transcription and they meant "planar"?

<comment><USER5> I think they just meant simpler. Are these molecules ever completely planar?

<comment><USER6> Aromatic ring systems are planar. The molecule in the picture looks like one big aromatic ring system to me.</comment></comment></comment>


Foxconn Chief Confirms The Apple iTV  - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/11/foxconn-chief-confirms-the-apple-itv/ <comment><USER2> Apple _must_ build an iTV. Remember XBox? Microsoft still hasn't made its investment back, but what it did do was buy them another decade of Windows dominance on the desktop, because gaming consoles could have been the post-PC devices that took over from PCs.

Now it turns out that phones and tablets are the post-PC devices, but thing might be very different if everyone owned a Sony PlayStation that also streamed movies and music into the home.

So what about Apple and their post-PC devices? If someone else figures out how to replace televisions with a connected device, they can also roll sideways into tablets and phones. If you subscribe to game of Thrones on your TV, you are going to want to buy the tablet that integrates wit the TV so you can watch an episode in your bed. You are going to want the phone that integrates with it so you can use your phone as a remote... From anywhere in the world.

Apple cannot allow anyone else to make this happen. Either televisions need to remain dumb terminals connected to coax, or Apple needs to own them. Apple cannot sit on their hands and watch Google (or maybe Amazon) figure this out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Originally, I didn't see an argument for Apple getting into the TV _set_ business, when they could just continue to ship the stand-alone box. [1]

But the longer they go, being able to deliver eye-popping margins while simultaneously being untouchable on price-performance with competing tablets and PMP devices, the more it makes sense.

The AppleTV as-is, is price-bound by willingness to pay for add-on set-top boxes. There's not much room for Apple-style profit there. [2] But consumer willingness to spend on _TVs themselves_ is much higher.

If Apple brings their supply chain magic direct to displays, there's far more profit to be had. And given the longer upgrade cycle on living-room gadgets, the larger up-front margin is almost _necessary_ to make it worth Apple's time in the long run. [3]

It just falls into place when you think about it in terms of Apple doing to the TV market, what it did to mobile devices: they define a new set of expectations at the mid-to-high price points that their competitors just can't compete with. Their competitors still dominate the lower price-points with notably lesser offerings, but there's not much profit there, so Apple just won't care.

In short: it wouldn't be able Apple selling $1000 sets to compete with Samsung's $400 sets. It'll be about Apple redefining the $1000 segment with quality, integration and services that Samsung and Sony will be unable to match for $1000, even on thinner margins.

[1] People don't upgrade their TVs like they do mobile devices or other gadgets. It was possible they might upgrade a set-top box that way though.

[2] You can make Apple-level money selling $100 MP3 players with a 30% margin because they get lost/damaged/upgraded/given as gifts/etc. But $100 set-top boxes? Normal people (Apple's target market) barely buy them. And if they _do_ get one and it _works_ , they go out of their way to not change things to avoid angering the vengeful spirits of living room electronics.

[3] The opportunity cost for Apple to pursue any middling business would be massive. And at this point I'm sure they have plenty of evidence on whether people buy and upgrade set-top boxes. If the early adopters aren't really doing it, there's no hope the normals would.

</comment><comment><USER4> If the Foxconn chief said it, then that can only mean one thing - it will now be built by Quanta.

</comment><comment><USER5> TVs with integrated computers have never made much sense to me. How would this ever be preferable to a set-top box, which, incidentally Apple already sells? Good TVs are very expensive and people tend not to upgrade them very frequently (10+ years seems commonplace). Whereas the computer components are pretty cheap (~$100) and tend to get upgraded frequently. But few will buy a $1200 TV every two years.

If you were Apple, would you rather sell a high margin, inexpensive product or one that is low margin and very expensive?

As a counterpoint, the iMac suffers from these same issues to a lesser extent and sells very well.

<comment><USER6> A really great integrated TV experience could have, among other things:

\- WirelessHD with CoverFlow input selection (no rat's nest of wires, physical input slots or keep-pressing-the-button input select)

\- an integrated AirPort (no cable-company modem/router)

\- Fully modular, wireless, THX sound that always works (even with Bluetooth headphones)

\- Built-in Blu-Ray and program guide that don't suck

\- Siri, of course

\- Always-on AirPlay (regardless of input or power being off)

\- TV programming packages and customer service provided by Apple

And most importantly:

\- One remote, or an iPod touch, or an iPhone, or an iPad, and oh yes, the iPad can watch ESPN while your TV is tuned to Dancing With The Stars.

<comment><USER7> All of it can be achieved with a set-top-box and a TV as long as you ignore half of its electronics and use it as a dumb monitor.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, and I think for most of here, there will be a "what's the big deal" factor when it comes out.

Those of us who have no problem containing our video setup inside our head, who have a Harmony remote, who have a mental picture of what goes where -- we're not really going to care that much. I think we'll appreciate a fully integrated TV experience, but I don't think we're the people who will get excited about it.

But let's put it this way, if you're staying at someone's house (i.e. babysitting or housesitting), the one thing you must hold a debriefing session on is how the TV, boxes and remote(s) work. That's kind of messed up. That's where the big advantage is for an Apple TV set.

<comment><USER7> That's the point - a TV remote should have 2 buttons at most - input select and on/off. And that's if selecting an input doesn't turn it on and selecting "off" from the input list doesn't turn it off. Or none, if it turns on or off according to the presence or absence of signals in its selected input.

The set-top-box remote, OTOH, could be no more complex than an Apple remote - menu/back, play/select/pause, directions.

One day I'll try tearing out every button off my TV remote and leave just the power and input buttons. Should be an interesting experiment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Someone has to take this market. It's a mess. I've got a Boxee, XMBC, previous has Windows Media Center and various other Windows based MCE's. I've looked at Wii, XBox, PS3, XStreamer and a dozen other products and found them wanting. I've followed YouView, Google TV and Apple TV with interest and mounting disappointment over the lack of progress. My wallet is out for the first product that does a good job at this.

I think it's the content producers that are mainly to blame for killing this sector.

My Boxee has BBC iPlayer, my Wii has Netflix and I'd need to buy something else if I wanted LoveFilm. Many video sites have stopped working on Boxee as they require a version of Flash that isn't available for the Linux version that Boxee uses and they don't have any alternative delivery mechanism. LoveFilm switched to Silverlight to get the DRM strong enough to win over some of their content suppliers.

It's crazy that I can't switch on a device that allows me to pay to stream any film produced in the last 20 years, view the free-to-air programmes that I can already watch on my TV set and play my local media collection with a half- decent 10-foot interface.

<comment><USER9> Roku + Amazon for rentals + Hulu Plus for TV

 __edit: and then I realize you are British so you swap the BBC Player for Hulu Plus and you are done.

<comment><USER8> Last time I looked Roku didn't do local media. Has that changed?

<comment><USER9> There are a few addons that are available. I've used Roksbox successfully for a year or so.

<comment><USER8> Is this some official appstore add-on mechanism or does it require hackery?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From: email@example.com

To: firstname.lastname@example.com

Subject: Re: leak

No worries. I understand how sneaky the press can be. Why, just now I accidentally let slip to a WSJ journalist about what really happened to your Chengdu workers. But no-one in China reads the American press, so no problem, right?

===

From: firstname.lastname@example.com

To: email@example.com

Subject: Re: Masterplan

It's all going well. As we suspected, Foxconn can't be trusted; it looks you're our only _true_ Asian manufacturing partner. Good thing we only gave them the plans for the fake prototypes -- can't believe the fools think a better TV is our next revolutionary advance.

PS: Love the latest prototypes you sent us. Not sure about the name though. iBrain? Also we'll have to go back to using monkeys as test subjects -- only thing I'll miss about our Chinese ex-partners is their supply of expendable humans. And lemme know when the new chips are done; Johnny's itching to finally test his iTelepathy app.

</comment><comment><USER11> I really don't see how they're going to differentiate themselves in a market that's already so well established. I probably said this about the iPhone, too, but... this time it makes even less sense.

<comment><USER12> I can think of a few ways:

1) Siri integration.

"Let's watch the Cardinals game." "What movies are on HBO tonight?" "Facetime with my mother."

2) Convergence with other iOS devices/tools. iMessage/FaceTime on your TV. AirPlay mirroring. Play your stuff off iTunes. Remote control from your existing iOS device.

3) Well known, deep catalog of music/video content for purchase or rent.

If it works well, it'd be huge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Carson? Doesn't he mean Sullivan?

</comment><comment><USER14> Let's assume this is correct: will that TV do 3D?

If so: how? I do not see Apple requiring goggles.

If not: will it be the reason the product fails or, if it succeeds, what does that mean for the future of 3D?

</comment><comment><USER15> Apple invents "The Telescreen: for the rest of us."

(I've already got a laptop with microphone and camera in my living room ... )

</comment><comment><USER16> Sweet! competition is on with Google TV

<comment><USER17> Google isn't making displays at this point, are they? I think this is talking about an actual TV display not a set-top box.

<comment><USER18> Strictly speaking no, but LG's going to release TVs with integrated Google TV systems in a couple weeks. ( [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/07/net- us-google-lg-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/07/net-us-google-lg- idUSBRE84602Y20120507) )

(And [like jsight said] Sony released a couple also, although they're apparently focusing on set-top boxes now: [http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/09/sonys-second-try-at- googl...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/09/sonys-second-try-at-google-tv- brings-blu-ray-player-streaming/) )</comment></comment></comment>


Ohlife shuts down – switch to maildiary.net - <AUTHOR> http://maildiary.net/

<comment><AUTHOR> import your OhLife-diary-export into maildiary and start over.</comment>


Feminist Hacker Barbie - <AUTHOR> https://computer-engineer-barbie.herokuapp.com <comment><USER2> The original article on the problems with Computer Engineer Barbie got flag killed, although later the moderators restored it. For those who missed it during its dead time, here is the link: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8625092](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8625092)

</comment><comment><USER3> I dislike the term feminist because despite noble intentions it causes a lot of controversy.

could you please call it "computer-engineer-barbie" like the URL suggests?

I realise the irony of me pointing this out.

<comment><USER4> Wait, why do the idiots get to win for injecting controversy into the word?

 _Feminist_ has a very clear, important meaning.

Don't let anyone corrupt it.

<comment><USER5> If feminists just behaved more to his liking then he'd totally support their efforts.

<comment><USER6> The comment you're applying to seems correct enough without doubling down on it and using it as a barb. Sometimes people can just be wrong without being bad people.

<comment><USER5> How'd you even find this post? The community flag killed it within an hour of it being posted.

And the OP is being incredibly condescending to a project that is specifically trying to help deal with that exact condescension. Who is he to ask they rename their project? And specifically to make him feel better about the fact that it promotes feminism. He deserves derision.

<comment><USER6> I first posted on it at the same time you did.

There's probably no less effective way to persuade people than by pointing out that people who disagree with you "deserve derision". It's a uniquely bad rhetorical strategy. It makes you look like you care less about the underlying issue than you do about status.

<comment><USER5> It's not about persuasion. The guy doesn't like feminism. What's there to persuade? He's not suddenly going to think "Oh, thanks for typing up a dissertation on why work still needs to be done for women to have to equal opportunity and choice in our community! I hadn't thought of it before."

He's free to not like feminism. I don't care. But as ck2 did, I highlighted how absurd it is that someone came in here with the implicit comment that if the project just made a simple change he wouldn't have a problem with it. That's absurd. If you have a problem with the word feminist you have a problem with feminism, which the project is promoting.

And doubly absurd that your issue is with me and not a community that flagkilled the story within an hour and upvoted a comment asking that the dirty f-word not be used.

<comment><USER6> The guy you responded to isn't the only person reading your comments.

When your comments stop being about persuading and start being about attempts to shame people, that's a cue that maybe it's time to let the thread die. Anyone who truly deserves derision probably doesn't care about your attempts at shaming, and meanwhile incivility makes the whole thread look bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What the heck is a Feminist Hacker anyway?

<comment><USER8> If we understand a 'Feminist person' to be a person who is a feminist, it follows a 'Feminist hacker' is a hacker who is a feminist.

<comment><USER9> OTOH, if we understand "Computer hacker" to be a person who finds clever way to exploit computers, a "Feminist hacker" is...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a feeling the kind of parents who (proactively) buy their kids Barbie dolls would probably be horrified if their daughters expressed an interest in software development.

<comment><USER11> Not true. Some of use are horrified our daughters have expressed an interest in Barbie.

<comment><USER6> If your kids are at an ordinary age to be interested in Barbie, I recommend not being "horrified" by anything they do. (That doesn't mean you have to give them Barbie dolls.)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, good point. I suppose it would be more accurate to say that I'm horrified by Barbie. It's like they're trying really hard to invent more ways for her to be shallow and ditzy.

Nevertheless I let my daughter consume the Barbieverse in moderation and wear her Princess dress to school every now and then. I just try to make sure she sees the world through other lenses as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Saving Todos to My Calendar - <AUTHOR> https://benwiser.com/blog/Saving-todos-to-my-calendar.html <comment><USER2> That's pretty cool, this reminds me of that notepad todo list idea [1] but I guess this is a little more user friendly?

[1] [https://lifehacker.com/why-you-should-set-up-your-to-do- list...](https://lifehacker.com/why-you-should-set-up-your-to-do-list-in-a- plain-text-f-5859642)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That was actually my inspiration. I probably should have mentioned it but I tried to keep this post pretty free form while I was working on this so I didn't heavily editorialise it.</comment></comment>


Chinese academic suspended after claiming Python clone 'independently' developed - noir-york https://www.ft.com/content/585b70fa-3c40-11ea-a01a-bae547046735 <comment><AUTHOR> A single report hidden behind a subscriber paywall. Swell.</comment>